Maybe This Time Read Free Page A

houses, and trees and fountains surrounded by flowerbeds.
    He followed her through the area to a roundabout. An enormous willow, its branches reaching down to the ground, towered at its centre.
    Passing a café, she said hello to a few of the customers on the terrace and crossed the street to a shop. She stopped in front of it.
    A man was closing up, pulling down a metal grille over the window. He took a coat down from a hook on the wall with a long rod and carried it into the shop. When he came back out, he spoke to her. As if realizing he had forgotten something, he disappeared into the shop again to return with a package tied with string. She accepted the package gratefully. He took it out of her hands and unwrapped it. He stepped back and proudly held a figurine out towards her, turning it this way and that. He showed it to her up close and from a distance, watching her face as he did so. As he rewrapped the figurine, she stroked his cheek, then said goodbye. A moment later she was closing the door to the next house behind her. The man watched her go, checked the grille over his shop window and finally left.
    People came out of the café, and others entered or sat on the terrace. In her building, too, there was coming and going, the door opening and shutting with a sound he liked.
    Under the cover of the willow he looked up at her flat. It was still too bright to expect a light to go on inside. Nor did she come to the window to look down at the square. But the front door finally opened and she emerged onto the street. She wore the dress she had held up in front of a mirror in one of the boutiques. Under her arm, she carried the figurine. She waved to someone on the terrace. She crossed the street towards him and passed him and the willow and walked down the street in the direction she had just come.
    Used Goods was written on the sign over the shop door, Gold and Silver, Bought and Sold.
    Wine glasses and vases and chandeliers filled the shop window. Tableware and cutlery. Behind them, in the shop itself, were tables and cupboards and display cabinets with glasses, goblets and mirrors. Rhinoceroses and elephants. Flower vases and crosses, a Madonna, rosaries and belts.
    He scanned the names listed at the entrance to her building and pressed several buttons. The entry buzzer sounded without anyone asking his name. His hand on the railing, he climbed the stairs. On the ground floor, a dog started barking. A door opened and closed again.
    The key to her flat lay in a box used for newspapers.
    He had smelled fresh paint from the landing. The flat had been repainted. But the pictures on the walls, the dresser, the wardrobe and the mask above it, and the chest of drawers in the hallway with the telephone and the photographs on the wall behind it, and all the drawings, the figurines – they all seemed to be in their places.
    The answering machine showed three new messages . He briefly ran his finger over the flashing light. The courtyard with its lime tree opened on to a park. The sparrows took dirt baths in the hollows they had formed. The wind swayed the swing that she had often watched from her window.
    He opened the window and on the sill saw the blackbirds’ nest he had found one morning under a tree and had placed on the swing for her.
    Over the tops of the trees, the view extended all the way to the end of the park, to the pond, which they had often circled on their walks, and to the boat they had frequently passed but never used, saving that particular excursion for another time. Since then he had sat in the boat many times, looking over at her flat, making up for the boat trip they had never taken.
    The smell of freshly baked bread drew him to the kitchen, where everything had been prepared for dinner. On the table stood two glasses and an opened bottle of wine amidst pans and plates and fruit and vegetables and meat.
    On the sideboard lay the flowers from the market. He put them in a vase with water and read a note